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> ...while member states of the European Union pay for development of the rockets, after reaching operational status, these launch programs are expected to beco

> ...while member states of the European Union pay for development of the rockets, after reaching operational status, these launch programs are expected to become self-sufficient by attracting commercial satellite launches to help pay the bills. I think the amazing thing about SpaceX is that they are constantly improving their stack. They don't finish designing a rocket, unless they're working on the next big rocket. The model of "build a rocket, and then sit back and profit for the next few decades" model is never going to take off again. A lot of the old launch providers need to reckon with this reality, and it's going to be really hard to turn these giant aircraft carriers of companies into embracing this new way.

lquist 6y ago
Interesting take. Is there a next after Starship?
- justaguy88 6y ago
  Elon Musk has mentioned an 18m wide version of starship (current is 9m)
  - 6pac3rings 6y ago
    Is the cost to doubling the width of starship proportional to pizza?
    - AstralStorm 6y ago
      No, much higher, because of extra engines and more plumbing. Starship is already pretty marginal of an upper stage and it's fired early. More marginal than old Space Shuttle, but cheaper to refurbish.
      - rbanffy 6y ago
        OTOH, the weight of the rocket grows mostly linearly (it's essentially a skin around propellants), the number of engines grows with the square of the diameter and the fuel volume grows at a cubic rate, so the engines can burn for longer (at some point, aerospike engines will become practical).
    - dang 6y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? You've been doing it a lot and it's not what this site is supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - 6pac3rings 6y ago
        I was wanting to compare the industrial scale cost of doubling the width of a pizza to doubling the width of the cross section of a starship. Your entitled to you're opinion
- xoa 6y ago
  Starship is significantly scaled down from their original plans. Despite being enormous, it's actually about the minimum viable size. Assuming there is the traffic to support one of course, there are actually a number of scaling advantages to greater size when using stainless steel as the construction material. So while it'd take a long while, SpaceX may well ultimately find it advantageous to do a larger Starship 2. Another area that humanity hasn't even gotten to the stage of considering yet would be dedicated interplanetary space transport craft. For now SpaceX is planning to just use Starships for getting out of gravity wells and getting between them. But the kind of cadence, $/kg, and sheer capacity Starship will enable also opens up the real option of permanent orbital assembly and maintenance facilities, and in turn the construction of spacecraft optimized purely for use outside of gravity wells (so much more emphasis on ISP vs thrust, no need to worry about aerodynamics, far less restriction on size, optimization for long time travel like potential synthetic gravity via spin, more radiation shielding, etc). No reason SpaceX couldn't lead the charge on that too in principle, though certain attractive forms of propulsion like anything using nuclear would probably necessitate more government involvement until/unless SpaceX can form their own mature government far down the road. Anyway, $100-200/kg (or less!) and huge volume/high cadence is so radically disruptive that it's kind of hard to predict how space will look a few decades down the line. It's going to be a wild thing to watch, with lots of opportunity.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    > permanent orbital assembly Sorry not familiar with these plans - does this mean that we assemble a bigger rocket (by using earth based rockets) at ISS level orbits and then relaunch to another planet?
    - NortySpock 6y ago
      I assume this is going to be not too much more than "we dock several components together in Earth orbit, then fly the whole thing where we want it to go" In theory this would work for anything that is permanently in vacuum, such as the NASA Lunar Gateway (though it's currently planned for lunar-orbit operations only), or some future low-Earth orbit station such as Gateway Station[1] or some sort of Venus, Mars, or Ceres orbital habitat. [1] https://gatewayspaceport.com/the-gateway/ https://gatewayspaceport.com/the-gateway/
- Ajedi32 6y ago
  After Starship, Elon has stated he wants an upgraded Starship with double the radius: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-elon-musk-starship-the-next-generation/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-elon-musk-starship-the-next... After that, orbital infrastructure: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373132222555848713 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373132222555848713 And possibly nuclear propulsion? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153378777893888005 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153378777893888005 Not to mention colonies on other planets: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373735946244431873 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373735946244431873 Most of that is pretty long-term though. I suspect Starship will remain a commercially viable platform for quite some time after its inception.
  - Someone 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship mostly lists uses that don’t have a real market right now: - Reusable launch system - Intercontinental transport - Space tourism - Earth–lunar transport - Mars colonization - Multiplanetary transport The only thing with an existing market in that list is “launch system”. They’ll have to develop the market for 100 ton launches, though (100 tons is 20% of the mass of the ISS) Because of that, I would say starship still has to prove it is commercially viable. Space tourism, in particular, highly depends on how safe one can make the trip. A 1:1000 risk of death likely would make many would-be passengers think twice before booking a trip. It also would depend on making the trip nice. The first few tourists might go for bragging rights, but after that, one would need attractions in space. Building those there will increase the cost of a trip.
    - NortySpock 6y ago
      Earth-Lunar transport now technically has a market: CLPS https://www.nasa.gov/content/commercial-lunar-payload-services https://www.nasa.gov/content/commercial-lunar-payload-servic... Granted, it's a monopsony for now but... Also, the next market might be "companies who want to mine asteroids for rare metals or rocket fuel", in which case SpaceX may be in the "sells pickaxes to gold miners" business. Those who pursue asteroid mining would do well to review the history of recently dormant or acquired companies such as Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, and Shackleton Energy Company.
choeger 6y ago
I don't think the latter part is correct. In fact, many European companies, especially from Germany, are quite agile market leaders. The fact that classical rocket companies are not that agile is probably caused by the comparatively small market. Before Elon came up with StarLink, even the Falcon 9 was a relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective. Yes, you can save say $50M for your launch. But your satellite costs hundreds of millions and it has a very long lead time. SpaceX has slips and occasionally loses a bioster. So you might simply buy the Ariane offering because they will effectively purpose-built the rocket for you. Especially when there are political connections to be maintained. But with a high-volume market things shift considerably. Now it looks freakishly expensive to launch even for $10M when your satellites roll out of the factory in the dozens. And the concept of building a rocket on demand when you might need to replace a few broken sats next quarter is just outlandish. I think old rocket companies are basically just seeing the entire business model change from a ultra-specialist logistics company to something more akin to FedEx.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  > In fact, many European companies, especially from Germany, are quite agile market leaders. Can you name a few?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - choeger 6y ago
    Herrenknecht, Liebherr, BioNTech. Google for "Hidden Champion".
- maven29 6y ago
  >Before Elon came up with StarLink, even the Falcon 9 was a relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective. http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/constellations/teledesic.html http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/constellatio... I'm pretty sure that the idea behind huge fleets of commercial LEO internet communication satellite constellations had existed long before Elon tried his hand at it (first proposed in 1994). Even starlink was only brought in-house after a cancelled project with OneWeb (formerly WorldVu) https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-internet-satellites-1415390062 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-int...
carabiner 6y ago
Large aerospace companies are constantly working on modifications, repairs, upkeep that all require significant analysis. For a commercial jet, something like a truck driving into a jet engine nacelle might entail significant engineers' time (CFD, FEA etc.) because the safety margins for aircraft are so small. The results might be a once off-repair, or it might lead to a redesigned part that is put into production. It's usually not that interesting to the public though. - Worked at one, know others still there. Truck example is real.
amelius 6y ago
The main difference between EU and SpaceX is probably investors.
- giomasce 6y ago
  And political fragmentation.
- Daho0n 6y ago
  And that SpaceX sells its packages overpriced to the military. It's normally called state-funding but not in this instance.
  - morei 6y ago
    The real world is more complicated than just 'overpriced to the military'. To heavily paraphrase the story: The US military has a number of unusual requirements that are not cheap to meet (security, extra review, etc etc). SpaceX originally balked at a number of those requirements, but after a fair bit of back and forth, they eventually threw up their hands and said "Sure! Whatever you want, but you have to pay all the extra costs". And so the US military launches are significantly more expensive than the commercial launches, but the large part of that is because the costs are genuinely higher.

lquist 6y ago

Interesting take. Is there a next after Starship?

justaguy88 6y ago
Elon Musk has mentioned an 18m wide version of starship (current is 9m)
- 6pac3rings 6y ago
  Is the cost to doubling the width of starship proportional to pizza?
  - AstralStorm 6y ago
    No, much higher, because of extra engines and more plumbing. Starship is already pretty marginal of an upper stage and it's fired early. More marginal than old Space Shuttle, but cheaper to refurbish.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      OTOH, the weight of the rocket grows mostly linearly (it's essentially a skin around propellants), the number of engines grows with the square of the diameter and the fuel volume grows at a cubic rate, so the engines can burn for longer (at some point, aerospike engines will become practical).
  - dang 6y ago
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? You've been doing it a lot and it's not what this site is supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - 6pac3rings 6y ago
      I was wanting to compare the industrial scale cost of doubling the width of a pizza to doubling the width of the cross section of a starship. Your entitled to you're opinion
xoa 6y ago
Starship is significantly scaled down from their original plans. Despite being enormous, it's actually about the minimum viable size. Assuming there is the traffic to support one of course, there are actually a number of scaling advantages to greater size when using stainless steel as the construction material. So while it'd take a long while, SpaceX may well ultimately find it advantageous to do a larger Starship 2. Another area that humanity hasn't even gotten to the stage of considering yet would be dedicated interplanetary space transport craft. For now SpaceX is planning to just use Starships for getting out of gravity wells and getting between them. But the kind of cadence, $/kg, and sheer capacity Starship will enable also opens up the real option of permanent orbital assembly and maintenance facilities, and in turn the construction of spacecraft optimized purely for use outside of gravity wells (so much more emphasis on ISP vs thrust, no need to worry about aerodynamics, far less restriction on size, optimization for long time travel like potential synthetic gravity via spin, more radiation shielding, etc). No reason SpaceX couldn't lead the charge on that too in principle, though certain attractive forms of propulsion like anything using nuclear would probably necessitate more government involvement until/unless SpaceX can form their own mature government far down the road. Anyway, $100-200/kg (or less!) and huge volume/high cadence is so radically disruptive that it's kind of hard to predict how space will look a few decades down the line. It's going to be a wild thing to watch, with lots of opportunity.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  > permanent orbital assembly Sorry not familiar with these plans - does this mean that we assemble a bigger rocket (by using earth based rockets) at ISS level orbits and then relaunch to another planet?
  - NortySpock 6y ago
    I assume this is going to be not too much more than "we dock several components together in Earth orbit, then fly the whole thing where we want it to go" In theory this would work for anything that is permanently in vacuum, such as the NASA Lunar Gateway (though it's currently planned for lunar-orbit operations only), or some future low-Earth orbit station such as Gateway Station[1] or some sort of Venus, Mars, or Ceres orbital habitat. [1] https://gatewayspaceport.com/the-gateway/ https://gatewayspaceport.com/the-gateway/
Ajedi32 6y ago
After Starship, Elon has stated he wants an upgraded Starship with double the radius: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-elon-musk-starship-the-next-generation/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-elon-musk-starship-the-next... After that, orbital infrastructure: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373132222555848713 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373132222555848713 And possibly nuclear propulsion? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153378777893888005 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153378777893888005 Not to mention colonies on other planets: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373735946244431873 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373735946244431873 Most of that is pretty long-term though. I suspect Starship will remain a commercially viable platform for quite some time after its inception.
- Someone 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship mostly lists uses that don’t have a real market right now: - Reusable launch system - Intercontinental transport - Space tourism - Earth–lunar transport - Mars colonization - Multiplanetary transport The only thing with an existing market in that list is “launch system”. They’ll have to develop the market for 100 ton launches, though (100 tons is 20% of the mass of the ISS) Because of that, I would say starship still has to prove it is commercially viable. Space tourism, in particular, highly depends on how safe one can make the trip. A 1:1000 risk of death likely would make many would-be passengers think twice before booking a trip. It also would depend on making the trip nice. The first few tourists might go for bragging rights, but after that, one would need attractions in space. Building those there will increase the cost of a trip.
  - NortySpock 6y ago
    Earth-Lunar transport now technically has a market: CLPS https://www.nasa.gov/content/commercial-lunar-payload-services https://www.nasa.gov/content/commercial-lunar-payload-servic... Granted, it's a monopsony for now but... Also, the next market might be "companies who want to mine asteroids for rare metals or rocket fuel", in which case SpaceX may be in the "sells pickaxes to gold miners" business. Those who pursue asteroid mining would do well to review the history of recently dormant or acquired companies such as Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, and Shackleton Energy Company.

choeger 6y ago

I don't think the latter part is correct. In fact, many European companies, especially from Germany, are quite agile market leaders. The fact that classical rocket companies are not that agile is probably caused by the comparatively small market. Before Elon came up with StarLink, even the Falcon 9 was a relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective. Yes, you can save say $50M for your launch. But your satellite costs hundreds of millions and it has a very long lead time. SpaceX has slips and occasionally loses a bioster. So you might simply buy the Ariane offering because they will effectively purpose-built the rocket for you. Especially when there are political connections to be maintained. But with a high-volume market things shift considerably. Now it looks freakishly expensive to launch even for $10M when your satellites roll out of the factory in the dozens. And the concept of building a rocket on demand when you might need to replace a few broken sats next quarter is just outlandish. I think old rocket companies are basically just seeing the entire business model change from a ultra-specialist logistics company to something more akin to FedEx.

systemvoltage 6y ago
> In fact, many European companies, especially from Germany, are quite agile market leaders. Can you name a few?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- choeger 6y ago
  Herrenknecht, Liebherr, BioNTech. Google for "Hidden Champion".
maven29 6y ago
>Before Elon came up with StarLink, even the Falcon 9 was a relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective. http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/constellations/teledesic.html http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/constellatio... I'm pretty sure that the idea behind huge fleets of commercial LEO internet communication satellite constellations had existed long before Elon tried his hand at it (first proposed in 1994). Even starlink was only brought in-house after a cancelled project with OneWeb (formerly WorldVu) https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-internet-satellites-1415390062 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-int...

carabiner 6y ago

Large aerospace companies are constantly working on modifications, repairs, upkeep that all require significant analysis. For a commercial jet, something like a truck driving into a jet engine nacelle might entail significant engineers' time (CFD, FEA etc.) because the safety margins for aircraft are so small. The results might be a once off-repair, or it might lead to a redesigned part that is put into production. It's usually not that interesting to the public though. - Worked at one, know others still there. Truck example is real.

amelius 6y ago

The main difference between EU and SpaceX is probably investors.

giomasce 6y ago
And political fragmentation.
Daho0n 6y ago
And that SpaceX sells its packages overpriced to the military. It's normally called state-funding but not in this instance.
- morei 6y ago
  The real world is more complicated than just 'overpriced to the military'. To heavily paraphrase the story: The US military has a number of unusual requirements that are not cheap to meet (security, extra review, etc etc). SpaceX originally balked at a number of those requirements, but after a fair bit of back and forth, they eventually threw up their hands and said "Sure! Whatever you want, but you have to pay all the extra costs". And so the US military launches are significantly more expensive than the commercial launches, but the large part of that is because the costs are genuinely higher.